I’m writing to advise of the publication in English translation — recently completed by me — of a new book that so impressed me when I read it, I concluded it had to have the much wider readership it could get in English than it ever would have in the Italian original, and led me, with the author’s blessing, to undertake the translation myself.
Alex Zanotelli’s latest book is now available in English at its publisher’s website — Orbis Books — before general release on April 2, when it will be available via Amazon and all other outlets.
Alex Zanotelli is a Catholic priest (he goes by “Alex” rather than “Father”) and a member of the Comboni Missionary Order, whom I first met when he, while carrying a full load in his second of four years of theological studies, was assigned to teach a high school sophomore World History course to seminary students who were eight years his junior. He was one of the best teachers I ever had.
I next met him in person only 60 years later, and when I did, I quickly realized I was in the presence of a great man. He had led a remarkable life in the interval, some of which he narrates in the book. Born and raised in Italy, educated in the U.S., he spent decades both in Muslim/Arab and sub-Saharan Africa and, in between, a dozen years as editor of an Italian Catholic magazine, where his crusades and criticisms against the Africa policies of the Italian government led the government to pressure the Vatican to have him dismissed.
From there he was “exiled” to Nairobi, Kenya, where he did as no other NGO participant had ever done: choosing to live in a shantytown shack among the poorest and most desperate of slums anywhere in the world, some details of which he narrates, and which can — and did — move one to tears. His experiences there did nothing less than re-shape his entire worldview and, profoundly moved, to “re-think” everything. Since then, he has chosen to live his final decades in the poorest district of Naples, addressing the profound social problems of, and in service to, marginalized communities there.
He has been called one of the most charismatic figures in Italian Catholicism, and has a public prominence in Italy that far surpasses his Catholic community, in his continuing activism in social justice, at age 86. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Alex+Zanotelli
After such experiences, his last book is written as if it were his end-of-life legacy. Entitled, “Letter to the White World,” I like to think of it as being about racism — writ large, i.e., historically — going back over 500 years of history, to the “Age of Discovery” and continuing forward to today — and geographically, practically worldwide, or at least as far as white Europeans have spread and dominated. And it is about the current legacy of that history — white supremacy and the radical right ascendancy that has come with it — which could hardly make it more timely in the context of the events of the day throughout the geographical origins of the readership it addresses.
Although it is explicitly addressed to the “white world,” and is guaranteed to make those of us with that skin color think deeply about things we probably have never thought about before, even to the point of personal discomfort, I would think it would be of interest, and inspirational, to persons of all colors.
Perhaps you’d like your very own copy to read, to pass on to your friends, and/or to recommend to everyone you know, which you can get before general release, at its publishers website:
https://orbisbooks.com/products/letter-to-white-tribe (It’s also available on pre-order, in print or eBook edition, at Amazon Books).
Frank Stachyra is an Oak Park resident.